BLTR

 Moonfall movie review: Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson hopelessly surrender to Roland Emmerich's dated, irresponsible vision Ploys that felt smart in our teens look so incredibly silly today, that it is a miracle that Moonfall has managed a theatrical release, instead of being dumped in a corner of a streaming website. It has only been a couple of months since Hollywood hit us with the polarising Don’t Look Up, where director Adam McKay parodied Hollywood’s end-of-the-world movies about a meteor heading towards planet earth, only to be met with denial and apathy. There is a segment in the film where while the scientists are going around trying to warn the people about the impending Armageddon, Hollywood makes a film on it called Total Devastation, starring [fictitious] Hollywood heartthrob Devin Peters [played sportingly by Chris Evans, who gives interviews from behind his massive sunglasses, using zero modulation in his voice]. I would be willing to bet half my fortune that Total Dev...

With his biography on Raj Kapoor, Rahul Rawail is not looking to ruffle feathers or provide cheap thrills. He is clearly in awe of the person that he is writing about, and this subjectivity is central to the book. Did you know that filmmaker Rahul Rawail, who launched the careers of Bollywood actors such as Kajol, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Sunny Deol, Amrita Singh, Paresh Rawal, Kumar Gaurav, and Vijeta Pandit, was once an assistant director to the legendary actor-director-producer Raj Kapoor (1924-1988)? Rawail’s lifelong debt to his guru has been magnificently chronicled in the book Raj Kapoor: The Master at Work (2021), his collaboration with Pranika Sharma. This book is for people who are fascinated by the magic that unfolds on the big screen, and for people who are excited about the technical aspects of filmmaking – zeroing in on an idea, developing it, casting, scouting locations, working with actors, costumes, cinematography, lighting, music direction, sound recording, editing, an...

The Pro Kabaddi League, which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic last year, is set to resume in Bangalore on 22 December. After a year’s absence, the Pro Kabaddi League is set to resume in Bangalore on 22 December. The League, which had to be cancelled due to the pandemic last year, will take place in a bio-secure bubble at the Sheraton Grand, Whitefield. Pro Kabaddi has been credited with morphing one of the oldest Indian sports into a TV phenom and over the years it has grown to be one of the most popular Leagues in the country. Like 2019, the tournament will start with a 12-team League stage. Bengal Warriors are the defending champions. Even in the best of times, Pro Kabaddi has thrown up a few surprises and been a platform for emerging talent in the country. More of that can be expected this time as the players haven’t played in such a high-pressure tournament for almost two years. The teams have been in camp for almost eight weeks before undergoing a seven-day quarantine in B...

 There is a certain narrative arc a sports movie or a period drama can adhere to. And yet, their limitations of late have been compensated for with their capacity to generate a feeling of nationalism. The opening scene of Saina, a biopic of the celebrated Badminton icon that released in March this year, unravels with the protagonist’s racing thoughts as she is in the middle of a crucial game — about patriarchy and all the barriers faced by women to date, their fate often sealed at the age of 18. And yet, her next line is, "Main Saina.. Bharat ki beti." Despite all the prejudice and adversities, the legendary player cannot disassociate herself from her nation — how she sees herself in relation to her country’s pride remains the leading thought. Even though director Amole Gupte does well to steer clear of jingoistic clichés later on in the narrative, this two-minute stretch pretty much sums up the biggest mission undertaken by popular Hindi cinema in the last couple of years — ...

Jean-Marc Vallee’s women are that rare breed that flirt with the idea of avenging trauma with a sense of self-consuming depravity. In a roundtable interview with The Hollywood Reporter in 2019, Jean-Marc Vallee claimed he fought with his producers for ‘9 AM to 6 PM’ shoots. “I also fight for the music budget, to put music at the centre of my stories," the director added. Vallee’s penchant for using music as an iconic quotation rather than serviceable backdrop was a keen aspect of his work that many will remember for not just how it looked, but also how it sounded. For Sharp Objects, Vallee pushed HBO to use Led Zepplin as the basis for a deeply grim series. The director had also claimed on record that he wanted to be a rockstar for his ear for music and its crescendos, evident in his use of Michael Kiwanuka’s ‘Cold Little Heart’ for Big Little Lies. But more than his musical eccentricities, Vallee, who died aged 58 today, knew how to cautiously illuminate some of the darkest place...